On Feb. 28, music lovers were able to view and listen to our new Center for Sound in St. Paul. I was lucky enough to attend with my plumber buddy, Tommy, to see and hear the excitement that this new venue will bring to our city and the region.

The talk of how to use the forecast $1.9 billion surplus centers only on "spend it" or "give it back." Both ideas may lead to upsetting the fiscal outlook in later biennia. If you spend it, you set a new base level of "acceptable" spending, even when revenues are not sufficient. If you give it back, you may find the need to raise taxes later on.

The recent history of Minnesota state discretionary spending has been to spend significant dollars on the wants of special interest groups and to limit spending on the needs of the majority of Minnesotans. This is evidenced by the high levels of spending on the Vikings stadium, Saints stadium, Senate office building, capital renovation, light rail, etc. while limiting the spending on roads and bridges. This seems to be a strong bias toward spending on luxuries vs. spending on necessities.

With all the talk of making the bike trails bigger and better, and going so far as to let the bike riders tell us where to put them, has anyone stopped to ask if they are ALL licensed bicycles? Snowmobiles, ATVs, and yes, even cross country skiers have to pay to use the trails. I think it only fair that bikers pay to use the trails (and kidnapped street lanes). I should think that licensing (statewide) and special yearly fees (I know people don't like the word "taxes") for use of these trails would be almost automatic, given that we are looking under stones for more revenue streams.

How is it that Wisconsin is blessed with politicians such as Gov. Scott Walker, U.S. Sens. Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson, and I am stuck with Gov. Mark Dayton, U.S. Sens. Klobuchar and Franken, and U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum? I guess it's as my dad used to say, "life is not fair."

Viewers of the Academy Awards were down 16 percent this year. I for one may never watch them again. It was bad enough that they are overlong and much is boring, but watching winners use the podium to expound their personal political views is becoming disgusting. Why in all of their inflated egos do they think anyone would pay more heed to the views of an actor than I would to those of my garbageman?

Gov. Dayton and Senate Majority Leader Bakk need to reconcile their differences so that the two of them, along with the other Democrats in office, can get back to what they do best: raising taxes and passing another state budget that will surpass the previous budget that spent the most taxpayer dollars in the history of Minnesota.

Monday's Pioneer Press had an article ("Finding out what works") that detailed one school's program that was helping to close the achievement gap between majority and minority students. The teachers are creative and concerned with and for the students. But the most damning comments came at the end of the article, indicating that the teachers were concerned with the number of students with apparent emotional and behavioral issues that were assigned to Obama School.